Happy Six Year Blogiversary!

College Days – Early 1980’s

I’ve loved writing since I was a child and used to dream about being the next Erma Bombeck. In high school, I discovered journalism and became the Co-Editor of my high school newspaper. Majoring in Radio/Television in college, I thought about becoming a television reporter.

Once I graduated from college, I realized it was hard to get a “real job” in the broadcast journalism field. I was hired as a Marketing Assistant in my hometown of Little Rock in the summer of 1984, but the job turned out to be a glorified data entry operator position and it didn’t work out. That means I was let go before Labor Day.

Having always wanted to live in a big city, I moved to Dallas, Texas and started a job with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) as an Advertising Assistant in the Recruiting Department. I spent the next two years working in the Advertising, Public Relations and Recruiting Departments for EDS. After that, I moved back to Little Rock and married my boyfriend, Thruston Stewart Doan, who I had met during my last semester in college.

Fast forward twentysomething years and I had worked as a Technical Writer for several different companies in Little Rock, attended graduate school at night, received a MA Degree in Technical and Expository Writing, had two daughters and traveled with my husband in his job as a Broadcast Journalist. Wanting to incorporate creative writing in my professional life, I started writing a blog during the summer of 2011. Here is the first post that was published on September 7, 2011.

http://leslieinlittlerock.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-think-that-everyone-has-twin.html

When I started my blog six years ago, I had three goals:

1. Share my creative writing with others.
2. Publish my movie reviews.
3. Explore ways to find ways to get paid for writing.

Over these past six years, I have succeeded in meeting all three goals!

From writing a blog entry detailing the Glee Live Tour on June 4, 2011 to telling my experiences on the website LymphomaInfo.net of completing cancer treatment after being diagnosed with Non-hodgkin’s Lymphoma in November 2000, I have shared my writing with many others.

Because of my love of movies, I have written several blog entries about different movies I have viewed. Three of the most popular ones are Gone Girl (published on October 11, 2014), When The Game Stands Tall (published on September 16, 2014) and Prisoners (published on September 20, 2013). When I posted my review of the movie The 33 (based on the true story of the 2010 Chilean mine collapse) and shared it on Twitter, actor Lou Diamond Phillips (who plays Luis Urzua in the movie) liked it!

Once I joined The Women Bloggers organization in the summer of 2015, I attended their annual conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas in August and wrote a blog post about the activities. Because of my membership in this group, I was able to find out about paid blogging opportunities and was hired for my first paid gig by McDonald’s of Central Arkansas in December 2015! And recently I wrote an article about the Hibachi Box food truck on the Only In Arkansas website sponsored by First Security Bank.

For the past six years, I’ve shared my writing with others, written many movie reviews and have had several paid writing jobs. I can also now look back at my previous blogs as a sort of visual diary of what I’ve been involved with for the past six years. My goal now is to continue writing and sharing my stories.

May 2017